Scott Adams, the author of the hit comic strip series “Dilbert,” recently confirmed that the comic has been removed from 77 different newspapers across the country. Although the exact reason for cancellation remains unconfirmed, the series has notably adopted a more politically incorrect tone with its jokes in recent years.
As reported by the Post Millennial, Adams said that the strip is no longer being circulated by Lee Enterprises, a newspaper company that owns nearly 100 papers. Adams has been the author and illustrator of “Dilbert” since 1989.
“It was part of a larger overhaul, I believe, of comics,” Adams said in an interview. “But why they decided what was in and what was out, that’s not known to anybody except them, I guess.” Adams also noted that other comic strips besides his own had been canceled by the same company, and that the decisions to cancel these other comics were each made individually.
Recently, “Dilbert” saw the introduction of a new character named Dave, a black man who identifies as White but was hired to fulfill the fictional company’s “environmental, social, and corporate governance” (ESG) quotas.
“All of the wokeness and anything that permeated from ESG… so that stuff made its way into the business world, and then it became proper content for Dilbert,” Adams explained. “The problem is that people see that even though it’s a workplace-related joke, but it’s more about how they implement it.”